Moving on...

It's now public knowledge. I'm leaving Sangoma/Paraxip. See the press release.

I have co-founded Paraxip almost 7 years ago and lead it through it's inception, rocky start, financing and growth of its products and markets. I ended up selling Paraxip to Sangoma in 2008 in what seems to be a great win-win transaction, even nearly 2 years after the fact. We have integrated the Paraxip team, products and operations into Sangoma for the benefit of both organizations.

I then spent the last year as VP of Marketing for Sangoma, where I learned so much and worked with a fabulous team. I think we managed to deliver on a solution-oriented and partner-focused marketing and product management strategy. It was a great experience, but it's now time to move on.

The very small software and services startup I am joining is poised for success, I believe. I will comment more on that later when this part is formally announced. One thing I can say however is that I am energized about the idea of "doing it all over again". The thrill of taking a nascent organization, with very little means, and taking them to a status of an international leader in their specific market is one that can't be beat..

That being said, I am very sad to leave great co-workers and friends at Sangoma/Paraxip. I wish them the best of luck...I know they will be successful!

My last day at Sangoma will be May 7. More on my next move later...

Key learnings in marketing...

Next week, it will be the first anniversary of my appointment as VP of Marketing at Sangoma. This causes me to take a few moments to reflect on key learnings from these past few months. I had never done marketing full time before, so some hits and some misses were expected. So, what have I personally learned or experienced during the last 12 months? There is a short list below. A lot of the items below just fall under the 'common sense' category, but in the fast pace of our work life these days, it's always good to sit down and actually write them down...

- Marketing is much more than brochures! Some people out there think marketing is about glossies and press releases. Ouch! I think of marketing with a big 'M'. It's the art and science of attacking the market to achieve the best possible business results. As such, it encompasses product strategy, go-to-market model, partner programs, corporate marketing, and of course all the 'traditional' product marketing items...

- Marketing is all about telling stories. If some marketing item is just out there, not connected to your story...drop it! It will just confuse everyone. The stories need to be true of course, but told in a light that is meaningful to the particular audience you are targeting. Stories will be slightly different for customers, partners, media, analysts, investors, employees, etc. Know your audience...

- You can't do everything. No matter how large or small your team, you cannot do everything you can think of. It's much easier to think of programs and events, than to actually implement and maintain them. No, it's not absolutely critical to have engraved pens or new T-Shirts available for the upcoming event. Focus on the important stuff that will get you significant business results!

- To know how customers perceive you and how you can improve, call them up, hold live events and visit them often. To know how the market perceives you and how you can improve, get online now and often! Use analytics. Get on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. Get web alerts. Information is key....And then actually write down the key trends (from customers and from the market) and make a plan to address them. Make it a regular habit. It's good to collect info, but if you never analyze it and make plans to address, it is worthless.

As I said, all of the above is common sense, but it's good to reflect once in a while and summarize our learnings. It allows us to internalize them, and then move on to the next steps...

IT Expo East in Miami

It's a busy week this week. I'm at the Internet Telephony Expo East 2010 in Miami. We have the tradeshow where we have 6 application partners and 2 distributors in our booth (#601, please drop by if you are in Miami), a side Latin America partner 'mini-conference', several briefings with analysts and media representatives, as well as countless other partner and customer meetings. So far, it's a very successful and busy conference for Sangoma.


And on top of that, we've just completed our third major announcement for this week. Let's do a quick recap of the announcements.

• Tuesday: Sangoma helps IndustryDynamics Enter Key Vertical Markets. Skype, corporate IP Telephony, existing PBX'es... Ever wondered how leading Hospitality and Education organizations can actually leverage the combination of these diverse technologies, as opposed to simply being overwhelmed by them? Sangoma and IndustryDynamics are announcing significant customer adoption of the VoiceGear Solution, which integrates Skype seamlessly with other types of corporate communications, in the education and hospitality verticals.
• Wednesday: inConcert Integrates NetBorder Call Analyzer to Boost Productivity of Outbound Call Centers. Following on the recent customer wins for Sangoma's NetBorder Call Analyzer product, this most recent announcement unveils that inConcert, a leading Contact Center solution provider in Latin America, is now also standardizing on our leading Call Progress Analysis (CPA) capabilities. NetBorder provides the world's most advanced CPA, which leads to improved automation of outbound calling campaigns and significant operational cost reductions in our customers' call centers.
• Thursday: Sangoma Renews Commitment to the FreeSWITCH IP Telephony Open Source Project. Sangoma increases its support of the FreeSWICTH project, because we believe this is one of the best projects out there for telephony developers. The scale and breadth of applications that can be developed on FreeSWITCH seems unmatched, so we believe at Sangoma that it's important for us to nurture the project and its community.

Overall, it's a very important week for Sangoma to kick off 2010. This week's announcement all go in the same direction: Sangoma thrives in enabling our application partners develop new applications that deliver true business value to enterprises and contact centers...